Review: 'The Ferguson Report' offers a damning indictment

David L. UlinLos Angeles Times (TNS)

Sunday

Jun 28, 2015 at 10:51 PMJun 28, 2015 at 10:51 PM

In a community, though, such as Ferguson – where an African American majority is policed by a largely white constabulary – race can't help but be a dominating force. "Data collected by the Ferguson Police Department from 2012 to 2014," the report explains, "shows that African Americans account for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson's population."

The timing couldn't be more appropriate: Last week, barely five days after Dylann Storm Roof allegedly killed nine people at Charleston's Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, the Justice Department's "The Ferguson Report" (New Press; 174 pages, $20 paper), first made public in March, came out in book form.

What do these events have in common? Nothing, and everything. One is an act of domestic terror, the other an account of what appears to be a long-standing pattern of discrimination by the Ferguson, Mo., police department. But what they really trace is a kind of through line, in which we are reminded, again, how deeply disrupted our supposedly "post-racial" society is over the question of race.

"One of the hallmarks of American racism has been the devaluation of black lives," writes Theodore M. Shaw, former director of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, in his introduction to "The Ferguson Report." "... Ferguson puts the lie to twenty-first century America's claim of post-racialism."

That's not new information. Ferguson, after all – like Charleston – is part of a continuum. "Black lives matter," Shaw observes. "Yet even after Ferguson, unarmed black men continue to die at the hands of police."

Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray: This is just a sampling from the last 12 months.

Still, "The Ferguson Report" is especially damning, for it reveals an institutional culture that targets African Americans. From the report: "Nearly 90% of documented force used by FPD officers was used against African Americans. In every canine bite incident for which racial information is available, the person bitten was African American."

And this: "We have found substantial evidence of racial bias among police and court staff in Ferguson. For example, we discovered emails circulated by police supervisors and court staff that stereotype racial minorities as criminals, (including) one email that joked about an abortion by an African-American woman being a means of crime control."

Abortion as a form of crime control? If a single image can encapsulate an entire story, this one does.

Part of the problem is that Ferguson's policing has been corrupted by a civic culture that values revenue generation over public s)fety. According to the report, "City and police leadership pressure officers to write citations, independent of any public safety need, and rely on citation productivity to fund the City budget." As a consequence, "(o)fficers sometimes write six, eight, or, in at least one instance, fourteen citations for a single encounter. Indeed, officers told us that some compete to see who can issue the largest number of citations during a single stop."

It is not the job of the police to serve the citizens, in other words, but to shake them down.

To be fair, this is not overtly a racial issue, but a social one. The insistence on maximizing income closely mirrors America's corporate culture, in which growth trumps all concerns and workers are expected to produce more and more by executives who see employees and customers alike as commodities.

In a community, though, such as Ferguson – where an African American majority is policed by a largely white constabulary – race can't help but be a dominating force. "Data collected by the Ferguson Police Department from 2012 to 2014," the report explains, "shows that African Americans account for 85% of vehicle stops, 90% of citations, and 93% of arrests made by FPD officers, despite comprising only 67% of Ferguson's population."

I could go on, but it's too depressing – or perhaps not depressing enough. By that, I mean that even in light of all this data, change is not assured.

The Justice Department, for instance – even as it issued this report – did not bring federal charges against police officer Darren Wilson, who killed Michael Brown in Ferguson. When officials such as New York Mayor Bill de Blasio have spoken out on police violence, they've been accused of not having their officers' backs.

Meanwhile, in South Carolina, debate is amping up again over the Confederate flag that flies at the state capital. Finally, I want to say, although this is about 150 years overdue. And yet, it seems to fit a pattern: Something happens, and we talk about it for a while, then forget until it happens again.

And happen again, it will. If "The Ferguson Report" has anything to tell us, it is that. It is a chilling, disturbing account of police dysfunction, but even more of social dysfunction, of the lies we tell ourselves.

In Ferguson, the report reveals, officials argue "that it is a lack of 'personal responsibility' among African-American members of the Ferguson community that causes African Americans to experience disproportionate harm under Ferguson's approach to law enforcement." These same officials, the report continues, routinely fix tickets for one another, as if the law did not apply to them.

Personal responsibility. I believe in it. As I believe that the law is a two-way street. "The Ferguson Report," however, insists otherwise, reminding us in the clear, concise language of an affidavit, how far we have to go.

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